"The white children taught us how to read and I went to school too.

"I went to church too. We did not have a church house; we used a brush
arbor for service for a long time. In the winter we built a big fire in
the middle and we sat all around the fire on small pine logs. Later they
built a log church, so we had service in there for years.

"We did not live near a school, so old mistress and the children taught
us how to read and write and count. I never went to school in my life
and I bet you, can't none of these children that rub their heads on
college walls beat me reading and counting. You call one and ask them to
divide ninety-nine cows and one bob-tailed bull by two, and they can't
answer it to save their lives without a pencil and paper and two hours'
figuring when it's nothing to say but fifty.

"Wasn't no cook stoves and heaters until about 1890 or 1900. If there
was I did not know about them. They cooked on fireplace and fire out in
the yard on what they called oven and we had plenty of plain grub. We
stole eggs from the big house because we never got any eggs.

"The custom of marrying was just pack up and go on and live with who you
wanted to; that is the Negroes did--I don't know how the white people
married. This lawful marrying came from the law since man made law.

"When anybody died everybody stopped working and moaned and prayed until
after the burying.

"I can say there is as much difference between now and sixty years ago
as it is in day and night."